Posts by Adrian Bece

Introduction of Web Speech API to Chrome and Firefox opens up some new possibilities in general interaction with websites and, more importantly, accessibility. Web Speech API includes two main components: Speech Recognition and Voice Synthesis. In this article, we are going to use the Speech Recognition API to implement basic Voice Search in Magento 2 header search.

Magento’s layout system has been vastly improved in Magento 2 to be more accessible, more powerful and to be more streamlined. But, for some reason, only a very small subset of layout functions is made available for use in Magento 2 Admin (category layout XML updates, to be more precise). In this article, we’re going to show a very simple way of bypassing this pesky restriction.

OroCommerce application version 1.0 has been released last month with a premise that it will „disrupt B2B Online Commerce“and „change the world of B2B eCommerce“. With the noticeable rise of Business-To-Business eCommerce in the recent years, it was only a matter of time when the supporting B2B applications and platforms would show up and we at Inchoo are excited to see what OroCommercebrings to the table. We will be taking a look at the installation process and some useful tips on getting started with recently fully-released OroCommerceB2B platform.

Head on over to Magento dashboard in your store and take a look at CMS blocks. How many CMS blocks have you got? Can you tell which of the blocks are being used on site and which are currently not active or can be safely removed? Can you pick a random CMS block and instantly know what it is and where to find it on site? In this article we’re going to cover a powerful way of organizing, searching and filtering CMS blocks by simply naming them in a specific way. And the best part is that it works out of the box in vanilla Magento without any extensions.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee once said that “Access (to the Web) by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect”. We, as developers, always strive to create a website which looks and feels good on a wide range of devices, resolutions, operating systems, network speeds, etc., but how often do we consider designing or creating a website for a wide range of people? In this article, we’re going to cover some basic frontend principles of improving accessibility and what that means in context of a Magento website.

Editing and styling Magento’s transactional eMails and eMails in general can be a real headache. There are numerous reasons for that, for example the number of eMail clients available that have their own quirks and the complicated workflow of the testing process. This article will cover some of the general advices and tricks that will, hopefully, help you in development. These aren’t some general rules for the most part, but advices and guidelines that you may or may not use, which I discovered during my work on various projects.

While working on a project, I had to add a unique static block between header and main content of the CMS page on each CMS page. Element had to be fully customizable via Magento admin panel and it had to be easy to create on new CMS pages, easily modifiable and removable. Since that element needed to be placed outside of the main content, it couldn’t have been added using CMS in Magento admin. It had to be added using Magento layouts. Here’s how I achieved that.